Brad Bird Gives Incredibles 2 Script Update

Posted 2017-07-03 05:02:31

In the years since director Brad Bird and animation studio Pixar teamed up to make The Incredibles, the superhero genre has discovered a newfound success. This is partially due to the establishment of shared universes, like the Marvel Cinematic Universe or the upcoming DC Extended Universe, and also thanks to the quality of the films becoming more consistent with major franchises, like The Dark Knight trilogy and the Captain America series. At any rate, superhero movies have become a well-established genre of their own that isn’t likely to go away anytime soon.

The Incredibles 2 has been in development for some time now, but with director Brad Bird having taken time off from animation to pursue live-action projects, like Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and the recent Tomorrowland, development on the animated sequel has been slow going up until now. But as Bird has indicated, The Incredibles 2 is indeed his next project. And to prove it, the film even received a teaser poster at Disney’s D23 convention.

While speaking with Collider in promotion for the upcoming re-release of The Iron Giant, Bird gave an update on where The Incredibles 2 is in terms of the development process. He started by revealing he’s nearly done with the first draft of the script and the storyboarding process has already begun:

“I have the story arc. I’m probably three-quarters through the script, first pass through the script, but we’re already boarding parts of it. I’ve got a lot of people that worked on the first one working on it, so we’re all having a good time with it.”

As with any film, especially an animated one, things can constantly change, up until its release date. So the story arc in place for The Incredibles 2 now may be altered depending on how well it works or doesn’t. Still, at the very least, it sounds like Bird has an idea for the general direction he’s going with the sequel – which he says will be heavily focused on the characters rather than the action:

“But what’s changed is there were only two other superhero franchises at the time Incredibles came out. One of them was X-Men and the other was Spider-Man, and now there are 400 billion of them and there’s a new superhero movie every two weeks. What you don’t want to do is trot over the same turf in the same way everyone else is. So we’re trying to keep it focused in the area that our film was, which was a little bit more about characters and relationships and stuff like that, and see where that takes us. But we’re having a good time.”

As previously mentioned, the landscape for the superhero genre has significantly changed since the release of The Incredibles over a decade ago. Instead of trying to compete with the big-budget action sequences offered by many superhero flicks, it seems Bird is trying to go a different direction and really explore the dynamics between each of the characters, which is one particular element that made the first film so engaging.

With a clear direction already established for the sequel, the next question, then, concerns a potential release date for The Incredibles 2. While Bird says there is no release date set for the film yet, there is a chance it may move up in the slate if things go well enough, like it happened with the original Incredibles:

“In terms of the release date, we were originally—Incredibles was supposed to happen after Cars, and our wheels just happened to click a little earlier so they moved us up. Release dates are a little fluid when you’re making films so far in advance. Some films are tougher to come together and tough nuts to crack, and other ones comes together a little more quickly, and so I’m just going to work as fast as I can work well with a relatively small team because I like small teams better until you’ve got everything firmly figured out.”

With Bird still finishing up his first draft of the script, and Pixar’s release slate already being fairly full for the next few years, there’s a good chance it may be a while before The Incredibles 2 finally arrives. Even then, there is a chance the film may move up if, like Bird indicates, things move fast enough and they’re able to get production on the film going soon. Still, as with any movie, it’s sometimes better to not rush things and make a better product rather than hastily try to get it done as soon as possible.

Screen Rant will keep you updated on the progress of The Incredibles 2 as more information becomes available.